


From First to Last

by ElCapitan18



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 21:10:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5981089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElCapitan18/pseuds/ElCapitan18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quiet night beside the campfire leads to questions of past loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From First to Last

The glow from the fire, combined with the dark of night, made her amber eyes glow. The cool temperature was companionable, and cicadas serenaded the moonlight. Her pale skin was like a beacon in the darkness. If Alistair put out that fire he was almost completely certain that Serai would give off enough light to see by. 

“Well,” she leaned back against her bedroll and hugged her arms around her middle. Serai cocked an eyebrow before prompting him further. “I asked you a question.”

Alistair felt his cheeks flush and scratched the top of his head as he avoided her gaze. She was smirking at him, that she-devil. Staring up into the starry night sky, Alistair breathed in through his nose and tried to find the words to answer her question. He shut his eyes and shook his head. How had they even gotten onto this topic anyhow?

“Why do you want to know the answer to that particular question?” he countered, stalling, deflecting. Alistair did not want to answer this question. He would rather dance the remigold. “It’s not that interesting of a story. I’m not that interesting of a person. We should talk about something else; like, do you think Darkspawn dream about Grey Wardens?”

She shrugged, her dainty looking shoulders jumping as she waggled her eyebrows at him. Serai’s mouth was pulled into a sneer, the twist of her lips was challenging him to back out now and voice his cowardice. It was always like this with her, a competition to see who was the greatest. They both knew it was her. Why she still insisted on playing was beyond him. 

Combing back her long black hair, Serai sighed heavily through her nose and rolled her eyes. As she leaned up a bit, she perched herself on an elbow and held Alistair’s gaze. “Would you like me to go first?”

Did he? Was knowing this about her really worth it? “Yes,” he answered them both. He was going to regret this, somehow he just knew it. 

She crossed her legs at the ankles and smiled at Alistair. It was one of those teasing smiles she liked to use on him, that showed her canines and made him feel like the canary to her hungry cat. He didn’t stand a chance. 

“I was eleven,” she stated casually. “And he was my best friend.” Serai’s eyes grew distant as she thought about that fateful day so long ago. Her earlier smirk started to fade as she lost herself to her memories. There was a somewhat poignant tone to her voice as she continued with her story.

“We had seen the older children do it, and I thought that we were old enough. Of course he wasn’t interested in that yet. But I’m not a patient woman, never have been.” When Alistair scoffed in easy agreement a smile flickered at the corner of her mouth. “The longer I waited the more impatient I got, until I couldn’t wait a moment longer. So one day I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and I kissed him.”

The visual of a young Serai taking charge of her prepubescent relationship brought a smile onto his lips. “Took matters into your own hands, did you?”

Serai grinned. “Tamlen never really stood a chance.”

No one did. She just had that way about her.

With her story told, Serai sat up again and crossed her legs in front of her. With her elbows on her knees, she leaned herself forward and rested her chin on her interlaced fingers. Her eyes were alight with mischief and her smirk was daring. She had told him her story, and now it was time for him to tell her his. That was the arrangement he had unwittingly agreed upon.

“So, _your majesty_ ,” she dipped her voice down as deep as it could go, trying to sound ominous as she reminded him of the bloodline he had never felt a kinship with. “You’ve told me that you’ve never licked a lamppost in winter, but does that mean that you’ve never done _other_ things with lampposts?”

Alistair combed his fingers though his hair and puffed up his cheeks as he sighed through puckered lips. With a shake of his head he replied, “You mean there’s _more_ to be done with lampposts? What a novel idea.”

Her eyebrows furrowed with displeasure and her eyes narrowed. She’d played along with his evasions long enough. Her patience had already reached its limit and now Alistair was pushing it. “I’ve kissed you Alistair,” she reminded him.

Well, technically, _he_ had kissed _her,_ thank you very much. He wasn’t going to let her get away with taking credit for that too. She’d played the shameless flirt until there was nothing left for him to do than to get out with it and confess to his feelings for her. Alistair still remembered that smug look on her face in wake of his confession. She’d looked so victorious, and the thought made him smirk. If either of them had won that day it had been him. 

“And I _know_ that I’m not your first kiss,” she finished her sentence with a daring glow in her golden elven eyes. 

A smirk slid onto his lips and Alistair winked at the woman seated across from him. “That good of a kisser, am I?”

Serai shoved his knee and laughed. “When you’re not drooling all over my face, perhaps.”

Knowing that she was teasing, he snickered at her jibe and shrugged. “I told you I was raised by dogs, didn’t I?”

“Stop avoiding the question, Alistair.” She got onto her hands and knees and crawled her way to his mouth. His heart leaped into his throat as she tilted her face a bit and brushed her nose against his. His lips parted on instinct, anticipating her mouth against his and the feel of her tongue flicking and dancing with his own. But Serai held herself back, keeping the plush of her lips a hairsbreadth away from touching his. 

Voice thick and husky in a way that sent a shiver down his spine, she whispered, “Tell me about your first kiss.”

She placed her bottom back down on the ground and returned his personal space to him. Snickering at the daze she’d left him in, she was very satisfied with herself when it took a moment for Alistair to blink himself back into focus and answer her question. What were they talking about again? Oh, right, his first kiss.

“I was fourteen—“ he started, only for her to cut him off.

Exasperated, she exclaimed, “Fourteen?”

“What?” Alistair frowned at her blatant disappointment at the timing of his first kiss. “Not all of us can be intimidatingly assertive like you, my lady.”

“Apparently not,” she laughed. When she noticed the expectant look on his face she waved for him to continue. “Go on, you were fourteen…”

“And she worked in the kitchens in the Chantry,” Alistair finished the sentence where she’d left it.  “She would sneak me food when I was sent to bed without dinner.”

Serai grinned. “So it’s true. The way to a man’s heart _is_ through his stomach.”

Pretending to laugh along with her with a sarcastic _har-har,_ Alistair continued. “Whenever she’d bring me food she would stay a while and we would talk. I started to develop a crush on her and one night, as she was about to leave, I built up the nerve to kiss her.”

She was leaning forward now, fully invested in his story. Black brows furrowed with intrigue, Serai investigated, “And then what?”

Surprised, Alistair retorted, “What do you mean ‘and then what’? That was my first kiss, I answered your question, you minx.”

“But now I have more questions,” she whined and smiled that smile she knew he could not resist. “What happened afterwords?”

Alistair shook his head but couldn’t help but smile back at Serai. The elf woman knew how to get what she wanted, trying to fight her was pointless. Shrugging, he provided, “We kissed a few more times until one day we were discovered. I was severely reprimanded and she was sent away.”

Offering him a sympathetic pout, Serai guessed, “You were that bad, huh?”

Unable to suppress his replying laugh, Alistair grabbed Serai by her arms and yanked her into his lap where he could properly tickle her ribs. Serai’s screams filled the clearing as she struggled to free herself from his grasp. Not caring about the disapproving glares they were receiving from Morrigan and Sten, he only relented when he’d had his fill of revenge. 

Serai was breathless by the time he was through tickling her. She was limp in his arms and allowed him to brush a few butterfly kisses over her delicate features before she sat upright in his lap. Clearing the residual laughter from her throat, Serai raked her fingers though her waist length, black hair and straightened herself out.

Biting her bottom lip, she stared at Alistair’s mouth for a moment before meeting his gaze again. “What was her name,” she softly wondered.

He stared down at the beauty sitting in his lap. She was such a tiny thing, barely standing as tall as his chest. It was no wonder she was so full of wild aggression. If she were taller all that anger would have been more widely dispersed. Still he would not have her any other way. 

“Clair,” he answered, his tone equally as soft. 

Serai brushed her fingers through the front of his blond hair and trailed her hand down the side of his face. Staring into his eyes, she asked, “Was she pretty.”

Alistair shrugged, inching his face down toward hers, “I can hardly remember what she looked like. Besides, she can never compare to you.”

Just as he was about brush his lips against hers, Alistair was pulled away by a loud and accented, “So!” He looked up from Serai to find that Zevran had plopped himself down across from the flames and was grinning at the both of them, knowing full well what he had just interrupted.

“What are we talking about?” asked the Antivan Crow, his gaze shifting from Alistair to Serai and back again.

“Yes,” Leliana also joined them by the fire. She sat down beside Zevran and folded her legs underneath her. Picking at the blades of grass, she smiled at them from across the flames. “What are you two love birds chirping about?”

Sighing heavily, Serai turned in Alistair’s lap until she was seated on the ground in front of him, with his legs on either side of her. With her back pressed against his chest, and his thighs as arm rests, she made herself comfortable before answering the other rogues. “Alistair was just telling me about his first kiss.”

Leliana clapped in delight. “Well, go on, tell us all about it!”

He shook his head in wide sweeps. There was no way he was going to be telling that story another time. Not even Serai could coerce it out of him twice in one night. Luckily he didn't have to, his beautiful elven leader was going to narrate the whole thing for him, and all wrong while she was at it.

“Her name was Clair, the Andrastian beauty. And she fed him until Alistair just gave it up to her.” 

Both Leliana and Zevran chuckled from across the fire. Hugging his arms around Serai’s middle, Alistair hugged her tightly to his chest and pressed a kiss to her temple. Loud enough so that the others could hear, he replied, “What can I say? I’m a weak, weak man.”

Looking thoughtful for a moment, the assassin pursed his lips before he commented, “I cannot remember my first kiss.”

Leliana looked doubtful beside him. “Everyone remembers their first kiss, Zevran.”

“Not when you’ve enjoyed as many as I have,” he replied with a wolfish grin. “Besides, why waste your memory on the simple act of kissing when there are so many more memorable things one can do with one’s mouth?”

Heat was pouring into his cheeks, his features flushing with the assassin’s insinuations. Alistair could feel the vibrations of Serai laughing in amusement. He could imagine the quirk to her eyebrow when she challenged the other elf. “Are you saying that you wouldn’t care to remember it if I were to kiss you, Zevran?”

She laughed again when Alistair’s arms tightened around her some more in disapproval of her question. The Crow was grinning at Alistair when he answered Serai’s question. “If I were to receive a kiss from you it would be my _most_ treasured memory, dear Warden.”

When Alistair voiced a curt, “Moving on,” the others laughed at his defensive tone. He rolled his eyes and rested his chin on the top of Serai’s head. He couldn’t remember how they’d gotten on this topic, but he was eager to move on to the next. Clair might have been the first girl he had ever kissed, but Serai would be the last… he hoped. Maker he hoped she felt the same way about him.


End file.
